Portrait of David Gardiner, Jr., c.1762-63
Oil on canvas, 30 x 25”
Unsigned
Johnston, the first professional artist to work in Connecticut, came to New London around 1762, and portrayed this 20-year-old man, his sister, and their parents, who were proprietors of Gardiner’s Island in Long Island Sound. Johnston had trained with his father, a Boston japanner, organ-builder, and portraitist, and he appears to have studied the Boston work of the Englishman Joseph Blackburn.
The pose, clothes, and oval format are sophisticated, but the face is a bit bloated and the eyes askew. Still, the look is straightforward and unpretentious, and that mattered most in Connecticut. Johnston was kept busy in New London, Hartford, and New Haven. By 1770, he had moved on to Barbados.